State Assemblymember Mark Gjonaj has joined the race for the City Council seat in the East Bronx being vacated by Jimmy Vacca. In a story on the candidates, Norwood News looks at what a win by Gjonaj could mean for his Assembly district.

A new report by a non-profit has identified 13 Bronx politicians in the state assembly and senate who received campaign funds from organizations supporting fracking, the controversial method to extract underground natural gas, reports the Bronx Bureau. But many of them dispute the findings of the report.

Victories swept through Chinese, Korean and Albanian New Yorkers as one of their own became the first of their community to attain political office – in Congress for Grace Meng and in the State Assembly for Ron Kim and Mark Gjonaj.

Even in a Bronx district that’s 45 percent Latino, an Albanian upstart may give the incumbent Puerto Rican Assemblywoman a run for her money in next month’s primary, reports El Diario La Prensa. Residents of District 80 say they’re impressed with challenger Mark Gjonaj’s door-to-door campaign, while Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera is hardly seen.

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General InterestGeneral Ippies Invite List IIimmigrant affairsEthnic and community media

As the White House urged Congress to withhold $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, officials responded angrily that this is only the latest in a series of President Trump’s attempts to stop the flow of federal aid to the island, El Nuevo Día reports. Political analyst Domingo Emanuelli found the Trump government's actions “barbaric,” and urged Puerto Rican Republicans to reconsider their allegiance. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said: “I shouted against Trump’s abuses from the start while others were chummy with him. Trump is not the plantation owner and we are not his slaves.” Link to original story →

The Indigenous Peoples March being held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, a day ahead of the Women's March, will bring together groups from Puerto Rico to South America and Central America, reports Remezcla, to focus attention on issues from voter suppression to human trafficking to police brutality to what is called an “environmental holocaust” by activists. “I think it’s a collective cry for help because we’re in a time of crisis that we have not seen in a very long time,” says Nathalie Farfan, an Ecuadorean Indigenous woman and event organizer. Link to original story →

After vowing to create a more inclusive school system in North Carolina, the Durham Board of Education introduced a new department of second language services to serve newly-arrived immigrants who don’t speak English as a first language, Qué Pasa Noticias reports. One of the main goals of the initiative will be to coordinate a translation and interpretation system to help families participate in their children’s education. “As our Latinx population keeps growing we keep opening our schools’ doors to those arriving from all over the world,” said Superintendent Pascal Mubenga. Link to original story →

With Sen. Kamala Harris expected to announce her decision on a presidential run, The American Bazaar asks members of the Indian-American community about the potential candidacy of the California native. While some celebrated the possibility of Harris, who is of Jamaican-Indian descent, running amid the current political atmosphere, others say the country is "still not ready for a female president and certainly not a non-white." Link to original story →